The super-powered white dog from the planet Krypton
that is the pet and canine companion of Superman.
A member of the Legion of Super-Pets,
Krypto wears a yellow dog collar and a flowing red-and-yellow cape
modeled after Superman's. The texts frequently refer to Krypto as the Dog of Steel.
As a puppy on the planet Krypton, where he had no super-powers,
Krypto was the playful pet of baby Kal-El, the infant Superman.
But as the hour of Krypton's doom drew ever closer, Superman's father, Jor-El,
nursing the faint hope that his ongoing "experiments with small rockets" might yet save his son,
launched Krypto into outer space in a tiny rocket as a final trial run,
intending for the dog-carrying rocket to return safely to Krypton after making one or more orbits of the planet.
"By a cosmic mischance," however, "a meteor struck the trial rocket out of orbit"
and sent it careening into space, and although Jor-El did succeed in launching his infant son toward Earth
in the final moments of the cataclysm, Krypto appeared lost forever in the interplanetary void.
For years, the rocket bearing Krypto drifted through space, ultimately to arrive on Earth, where,
like any native of Krypton, Krypto acquired super-powers like Superman's
and was happily reunited with his beloved master,
who was at that time a teen-ager growing up in Smallville in the home of his foster parents,
Jonathan and Martha Kent.